Suicide and Gravity - POEM

Suicide and Gravity

I’m sitting here at Powells Books on a rainy night in January

It’s ground zero for suicide talk
Only Juneau is worse (or maybe Utah)
Everyone has one foot in the grave here
And they all know
It’s gonna be
A damned vacation
When they get there

I’m smoking pot in the store

Through my electric vaporizer
I got a condition, after all
I just don’t remember
What it is
So I hope
He don’t ask

The cars driving by in front of the window from left to right

Make me believe I am traveling backwards in time
A croak/us folding up
The people that come and go in the chair next to me
Make me feel like I am moving in a donut sky
And I start to wonder why
I want to kiss the grizzled face of the man that plops down next to me
Smelling of whiskey and road and so much sAinT
That gravity just works differently on him 

And I wonder why I am alone and unhappy

And why I am in a crowd and crying

And why I can’t make her stay
And why I cut myself and think it’s good
And why I feel sorry for all the wrong people
And why I’m a middle-aged white man asking all these
Motherfucking
Questions
And I look up and the cars have stopped
And I see the face in the glass
And it’s me
And grizzled
And tired
And afflicted by gravity.

--Eric Marley

January 2013